Jennifer chewed nervously on a thumbnail, nibbling rabbit-like and just as nervous on the down-to-the-quick end. Her other hand wrapped tightly around her waist to quell the storm of butterflies fluttering wildly.

She shouldn't be here. The park had been closed thirty-seven years ago, thirteen years after the start of 'the plague'. Not that it mattered; there weren't any cops or soldiers to enforce the rules anyway. The park sat on a softly sloping hill overlooking the bay. With no park service, the grass grew wildly, reaching up to her thighs in some places. Rats skitted about her feet as she'd trudged through the high grass, searching for the perfect spot.

Fog, coming from the dark waters of the bay, covered the landscape in a thick, choking shroud. The streetlights, the ones that still worked anyway, illuminated the thick smoke with a ghostly yellow.

Jennifer shifted from one nervously rattling leg to the other. Finding a tree on the edge of a dilapidated parking lot, Jennifer leaned her tall, lanky frame against it, hiding herself in the shadows and finding another nail to chew on. Her palms were sweating. Heart hammering heavy beneath her chest.

She could sense the 'others', the ones like her, somewhere out there in the fog. It made her even more nervous. They all came for the same thing - the need, the desire, the want for something always a fingertips length out of reach. A time before the plague when they could run through the park, when they could hunt.. And be hunted.

"You'll be the death of me, girl," her mother's voice, filled with whiskey and venom, slurred hauntingly in her ears. "Hell, unless they kill you first. Don't you get it, girl?" She jabbed a pointed finger hard into the side of Jennifer's head. "The city's theirs now."

That was five years ago, the first time Jennifer had ventured into the city. Back when there still were soldiers policing the streets to hassle kids too old to be teenagers, too young to be adults - old enough to know death, young enough to still believe they were immortal.

And dumb enough to enter the city.

The baleful moan of a foghorn pierced the quiet. She felt a shift, a tension in the air that wasn't there before.

Then she saw 'Them'.

One by one silhouettes emerged in the fog, indistinct and amorphous, like dozens of shadow puppets on a darkened wall. The first to take form was a woman, at least, Jennifer thought it was a woman. She wore a black dress, all ruffles and satin like she'd walked out of a Dicken's play. Her face obscured by a black veil.

They were all dressed in black - leather, vinyl, velvet, lace. A boy no more than seventeen, eyes painted black, hair jutting from his head in chaotic spikes, wore a thick dog collar and tight vinyl pants that left nothing to the imagination or obscured his desires. A plump woman in her forties, with thigh high boots and a bodice that pushed her breasts up under her chin, rolled a whip from her hand, snaking it across the grass. They were young and old, of all races, shapes and sizes, smelling of sex and sin, jasmine and absinthe.

Jennifer felt something twitch in her gut, reverberating between her legs hard enough to make her hiss. There were more of them now not like five years ago the first time she'd come. Almost a hundred by the looks of it.

They began to fan out, their faces becoming clearer as the fog seemed to dissipate around them.

She could feel the others stirring, the ones like her hiding in the deep brush.

A man stepped out from the protection of the trees. Jennifer had seen him earlier just after sunset, standing under a lamppost in his jeans and black t-shirt smoking a cigarette. He'd sneered at her like an interloper imposing on his territory knowing full well no one owned the city.

He made his way towards a walking Tom of Finland painting with a fuzzy chest, leather chaps and bulging, well, everything. They kissed long, languidly, hungrily, before disappearing into the foliage.

It seemed to stir the others into action. The two sides moved towards each other like garrisons towards a battle, uncertain and chaotic but with a hurried intent. They paired in a multitude of combinations - men and men, women with women, couples, threesomes and more.

Jennifer's feet seemingly turned to clay, rendering her immobile. She thought about the girl with the jet black hair and kohl painted eyes. Then she was snatched away, taken deeper into the park. One by one, her options seemed to diminish as the crowd thinned and the air, suddenly thick with sex and possibility, dissipated around her.

Before, when she came a lifetime ago, she wasn't sure what she wanted. Now Jennifer knew. And it still lingered outside her touch no matter how much she wanted to reach for it.

"What's your name?"

Jennifer practically jumped out of her skin. Her head snapped towards the voice just inches to her right.

Sandy blonde hair fell in waves over her shoulders. Under the dim light, her brown eyes looked like dark coals and burned just as hot. She wore a thick, black fur coat that went down to her stilettoed ankles. She stood just a few inches from Jennifer. The heat from her body radiated onto Jennifer's.

"Jennifer." She blushed hard, peering through the veil of brown hair falling over her eyes and tucking her hands nervously into her pockets.

Katherine wove her hands between Jennifer's arms and torso, placing them on Jennifer's waist. She leaned in close, nose nuzzling a hair's breath from Jennifer's ear. "Do you want to fuck me, Jennifer?" She whispered huskily, breath wet and warm against her ear and Jennifer could feel her legs getting rubbery. When Jennifer didn't answer, Katherine moved her face closer, flicked out her tongue and grazed it across the corner of Jennifer's mouth.

Jennifer licked her lips. She thought her heart would explode from her chest. She could feel the deep, throbbing pulse deep within her pussy, aching and swollen and she felt like she could die from anticipation.

"Yes," Jennifer bobbed her head hurriedly. She balled the hands in her pockets into tight fists, unsure what to do with her hands as Katherine's roamed aimlessly up and down Jennifer's lean torso.

"Good." Katherine smiled. One hand drifted lower, down Jennifer's stomach, over the wide belt buckle that had been a gift from her uncle, tracing the line of her zipper and lower still, until strong, slender fingers slid between Jennifer's legs and cupped her mound.

"Oh fuck!" Jennifer groaned. Sure her legs would give out from under her now, she pulled her hands from her pockets and braced them, palms flat, against the tree behind her.

Off Jennifer's quizzical expression, Katherine pulled back her face and turned it towards the park. Jennifer followed Katherine's eyes towards the wooden table twenty yards from them. A middle-aged woman with dark, curly hair was bent over the table, her khaki skirt bunched up over her hips. Behind her, a pink-haired girl with black angel wings pumped her hips furiously. Jennifer felt her heart skip a beat, suddenly realizing what the two were doing, what Katherine meant.

Katherine returned her attentions to Jennifer. "It's been so long since I've been fucked. What about you, Jennifer?" She squeezed her fingers and Jennifer bucked against her. "Has it been awhile since you've been fucked?"

Before she could even think of an answer, Katherine's lips were on hers. Hungry and hurried, sloppy and wet. Jennifer felt like she was being consumed. Until she couldn't breathe because Katherine wouldn't stop kissing her, wouldn't stop doing that thing with her fingers despite the thick barrier of Jennifer's jeans.

Then she was gasping for air, reaching forward with her head to try and put Katherine's lips back onto her own. Katherine's hands were on her belt buckle, pulling apart the thick, strip of leather, the buttons of her fly popping loudly in the still air as Katherine yanked them open.

She shoved her fingers into Jennifer's jeans, rubbed her fingers hurriedly across Jennifer's pussy until they were slick-wet.

Jennifer didn't have time to think, didn't have time to say yes although she'd never have said no. Katherine's fingers, one then two then three, were inside her. She fucked Jennifer hard, deep, pushing with her arm life she would lift Jennifer off the ground. Jennifer tried to keep pace, rolled her hips, tried to match Katherine's rhythm. But it was too much all at once. Katherine's lips on her own, breasts mashed against her chest, fingers deep inside her. She could hear the others; their panted moans and heated sighs, the scents of sex and sin filling the night air and mixed it with her own.

She came hard and embarrassingly quick with a body shuddering convulsion and a scream choking in the back of her throat. Katherine held her weight as Jennifer leaned into her, panting heavily into Katherine's neck.

Katherine withdrew her fingers. Jennifer watched as she licked each digit clean.

"God, you taste good. Your kind always do," she added with an upturn of an eyebrow. She stepped backwards. With both hands, Katherine opened her coat. She wore nothing underneath. Unlike the others, faces painted white, gaunt and pale, Katherine's skin was sun-soaked and golden. Palmed her full, heavy breasts, tweaking her darkened nipples with her fingers.

Jennifer's eyes trailed lower, down the smooth stomach to the small, strip of hair that pointed lower.

"Do you want to taste me, Jennifer?"

A growl rose from the back of Jennifer's throat. She pushed herself off the tree, grabbed Katherine by the collar and reversed the two, slamming the blonde woman against the tree.

She crashed their lips together; jutted her tongue between full and wet lips, pressed her thigh hard between Katherine's legs and moaned at the purr panted into her mouth.

It was like something snapped within her. Jennifer knew what she wanted. Her hands roughly groped Katherine's breasts. They felt heavy and wonderful in her palms, thumbs eagerly rubbing over the hardened nipples. She rolled her hips. Katherine was hot and wet against her thigh, saturating her jeans, matching Jennifer's rhythm with an arch of her hips stroke for stroke.

Katherine was everything her mother warned about, everything she'd been searching for all those years ago - warmth and heat and sex and sin and danger.

She felt Katherine's nails digging into her shoulders, the resistance pressure as Katherine tried to push her lower.

Jennifer dropped to her knees, the grass soft and cool and crunching under her weight. She placed a hand behind Katherine's knee and hefted the leg over her shoulder.

Something dark and feral bubbled within her. She jammed her face between Katherine's legs, clamped her mouth on Katherine's pussy. It was like she couldn't get enough, couldn't concentrate on just one because she wanted it all. It's not like she'd never been with other women before, hadn't eaten pussy before. But the ones before never had a pussy like Katherine's. She was headier, sweeter, muskier than the all others, like the ripest, wettest peach but unlike any fruit Jennifer had ever eaten.

She felt Katherine's hand in her hair, fingernails raking against her scalp. The sway of her hips, grinding her pussy onto Jennifer's tongue. The heat coursed through Jennifer's body, flared between her legs and radiated outwards. Her eyes dilated until her pupils were nothing but black.

Katherine's skin before her, but she was more than skin, more than flesh. The skin seemed to turn opaque. Jennifer saw red. Blood, veins, capillaries and arteries, all throbbing heavily with the beat of Katherine's life force. The only thought, the only desire Jennifer had was to feed.

Struck and uncertain, Jennifer pulled her head back and gazed up into Katherine's eyes. The blonde looked down, eyes half-lidded, tongue running over her kiss swollen lips.

"Do it," she breathed.

Jennifer felt the slightest twitch of pain as her canines extended, drawing out to long, pointed fangs. She hissed then dove down onto that thick artery pulsing brightly under Katherine's skin, the one in her thigh right next to her pussy.

"Tell me about 'umans, Daddy." Jennifer cupped the large mug in her hands, licking away the blood mustache painting her upper lip. Today must have been special. Daddy only gave her venison blood on special days.

He tilted the wide-brimmed cowboy hat back on his head. "Who told you about humans?"

Jennifer shrugged. "School. They said they were gonna kill me in my sleep."

"I guess you were gonna hear about'em someday." He slung the rifle over his shoulder, taking a seat next to his daughter by the campfire. "A long time ago, there used to be millions of'em, billions. You know how much a billion is, Jennifer?"

She swung her head back and forth.

He picked up a stick from the ground and pointed it at the sky. "More than there are stars. Worse than rats, worse than cockroaches."

"Worse than cockroaches? Ick." Jennifer scrunched up her face in disgust. "Ain't they just animals."

"They're worse than animals. An animal knows its place in the world. Humans thought they were better than animals, better than themselves. Always fightin' with each other, killin' each other. A human would kill you just for lookin' at ya sideways. They killed for sport, for pleasure.

"There was a time when we could control them, like we do our herd. But our numbers diminished and they multiplied. Began destroying everything around them, the ground, the air, the water. Until we couldn't ignore them anymore."

"The Great War?" Jennifer's eyes brightened.

"That's right. They had numbers and weapons of all types but we're stronger, faster, smarter. They even bombed their own cities to try and stop us. But where there's right, there's might."

"But we won, right?"

"Yes, honey, we did."

"So why did Jeremy say a human was gonna kill me while I slept?"

"Well, humans ain't like us. They don't burn in the sun," he paused to watch his daughter's eyes widen in horror. "After the war, they were still around. The one's not in the farms, well, they became bandits. Come in during the day, when our people slept, steal our herds, burn our fields, slip into our homes.." he let his voice trail off.

Jennifer shivered. "But, there aren't humans no more, right Daddy?"

He tilted his head down until Jennifer couldn't see his eyes behind the brim of his hat. "I don't know. Like I said, they're like cockroaches, you think you killed 'em all and some more pop up somewhere else." He placed a hand on her shoulder. "But you don't have to worry about that, now."

"What if I see a human?"

"You have to understand, Jennifer, they ain't like us. Humans are evil, pure evil. They don't play fair. They cheat, lie, they'll do anything to get close to you. And once they do, they'll try and kill you. They all do. They can't help it, it's in their blood. You see one, you turn tail and run as far away as you can."

Jennifer came hard as the blood spurted into her mouth. How could something that tasted so good, feel so right, be evil?

Her father died nine years ago. They told her he'd been ambushed while making a delivery but she'd heard the whispers, the not so quiet voices that spoke when she walked by. He'd gone into the city, they'd said. Been going for years, they'd said. Finally caught up with him, they'd sneered and scoffed while looking superior down their noses.

It had to be true, Jennifer realized. If he'd tasted what Jennifer did, felt what she did. She knew, after tasting human blood, she could never go back to drinking cow or pig or even venison or that synthetic shit with the weird aftertaste that lingered for way too long. It was unlike anything she'd ever tasted. Rich, thick, salty and heady, like sex and moonbeams on a warm summer night, like every bad thing her parents told her not to do only to find out for herself how good bad could be.

Katherine's hands were on her shoulders. She pushed. Hard. Jennifer growled, clamping her teeth harder onto Katherine's thigh. Like a dog with a bone, she wasn't going down with a fight.

Neither was Katherine. She shoved Jennifer with the last of her waning energy.

"Stop!" Exhausted, Katherine slid down the trunk of the tree, landing hard on her backside. Legs splayed open, the inside of her thigh smeared with blood, pussy swollen and wet glistening in the pale light. Jennifer rolled onto all fours, hunched over like a feral cat in heat. Mouth gaping open, she shuddered as she inhaled deeply taking in Katherine's scent, wet pussy and blood, Jennifer's new favorite scent.

She lunged towards the space between Katherine's legs. Katherine planted a foot on Jennifer's shoulder and kicked her backwards. It brought Jennifer out of her haze.

Katherine closed her coat, wrapping her arms around her stomach. Her eyes were mournful, pleading.

"Run!"

A scream pierced the air. Not a scream of lust or pleasure. A scream of pain, terror, horror. Another quickly followed, then another. Then Jennifer heard gunshots, loud and quick, crackling like fireworks.

A panicked mob exited the forest in a chaotic wave. They were being chased. The others like her. Some even by the very same people who'd seduced them. Tackled to the ground, beaten, kicked, stabbed.

She saw the man from earlier, the one who sneered at her, his body jerked forward, arms flailing as his back filled with buckshot. He started to glow, his skin began to burn, like a gasoline soaked paper, one minute he was skin, flesh and bone, the next, nothing but burning cinders shaped like a man.

"Goddammit, Jennifer!" Katherine grabbed her by the collar and jerked her hard. "Get the fuck out of here!"

Her booted heels hit pavement and she almost screamed in relief because she was no longer in the park. They were running in a crowd now. Some with a purpose, others just trying to get away, comforted by the safety in numbers. It was a small comfort and one that didn't last long.

There were more of them. They came out of the dilapidated buildings with broken windows and missing doors. They chased, threw rocks, carried lit torches like an angry medieval mob. Flames licked Jennifer's feet as one of them threw a bottle. It hit the man next to her and he exploded into flames.

A scream pierced the air. One of them fell down, then another, then another. They weren't struck, or tackled, or shot. They just fell down screaming and writhing on the broken pavement.

Jennifer passed the middle-aged woman with the khaki skirt. Her skin was deep red, large boils erupted across her face and arms. She screamed something unintelligible before collapsing onto the ground, dead.

With a burst of inhuman speed, she cut left, separating herself from the crowd. Hurriedly jerked open the door to her truck and scrambled quickly inside. Something bounced across the windshield, cracking the glass.

A man slammed against the passenger's side door, bleeding palms on the glass, face covered in boils.

"Help me," he pleaded before sliding down out of Jennifer's view.

Jennifer turned the engine and slammed on the gas pedal.

The truck bounced and jostled hard on the cracked and pot-marked pavement. In an eternity, which was actually three minutes, she was back on the highway. The lights of the park nothing but a dim image in her rear-view mirror.

Suddenly, a gut-wrenching pain wracked her insides, like she'd been simultaneously shot and stabbed with dozens of white-hot pokers. Jennifer wrapped an arm around her stomach, leaning over the steering wheel. It felt like her insides were on fire, like her very blood had turned to gasoline and someone had struck a match. Blotches of reddened skin spread across her forearms. Then she saw the first boil.

"Oh God, no!" She moaned.

It's why she didn't see the utility pole until her truck wrapped around it.

"Honestly," the doctor had told her behind a thick surgical mask and goggles to protect his eyes, "I'm surprised you're still alive."

They'd found her hours later, broken and bleeding in her ruined truck. The injuries healed quickly, they always did. But they couldn't do anything about the blood.

They gave her transfusion after transfusion. Put leeches on her skin. Soaked her in tubs of a slimy, greenish substance that burned. They got most of it out, but they couldn't get all of it. Then discharged her with a bag of pills she'd have to take for the rest of her life as she walked through a gauntlet of contrasting pitiable and distasteful looks.

"Serves you damn right!" her mother screamed at her before tossing the last of Jennifer's clothes onto the front porch and slamming the door in her face.

For weeks Jennifer hung around like a ghost moored to its place of death; she slept in the old keeper's shed behind the high school, ate scraps of food from the garbage bin behind Karl's restaurant. When she was truly desperate, she'd go to the church where, for the price of listening to Pastor Robert patronize her for hours on end, she could get an actual hot meal.

She'd been born and raised in the small town and didn't know much else. Her family had never been the town favorites, but now Jennifer was a pariah. No one would talk to her. No one would look her in the eye. When she walked the streets, they'd skirt out of her way. Doors were shut. Windows were closed.

She was infected now. Scorned and ostracized. Jennifer was plagued. Tainted.

They no longer kept their voices at a forced whisper like when her father died. 'Poor dear', they tutted. '..just like her father..', '..got what she deserved..', '..stupid human's whore..'.

Fifty years ago, during the last Great War with the humans, the humans created a virus. There wasn't enough for all of them, but there was enough. They injected then sacrificed themselves, plunging into enemy territory like drunken kamikaze pilots. By the time anyone realized what was going on the damage had been done, millions dead, millions more infected and their main food supply was gone.

"If you hadn't stopped drinking," the doctor explained, "there would have been nothing we could do."

Except Jennifer hadn't stopped herself from drinking. If it had been up to her, she'd still be between Katherine's legs. It's all she could think about. Why? Why had Katherine stopped her? It was an ambush. She knew now they were there to kill them and yet Katherine didn't.

Now, along with the sickness, Jennifer was overcome with a hunger she'd never felt before. A hunger that couldn't be sated with scraps from garbage bins, or cow's blood stolen from the General Store. It didn't come all the time but when it did, it consumed her. An anguishing pain that cramped her stomach, made her see red, her fangs extend and all she could think about was blood and pain and an unquenchable arousal blazing between her legs.

She started cutting herself. When the hunger hit, she'd slash her wrist and drink from her own veins, coming hard as the salty liquid splashed the back of her throat.

Some kids stumbled upon her one evening behind the hardware store, dirty and disheveled, one hand jammed between her legs, the other pressed against her mouth. They screamed then laughed then came back to throw rocks when she hissed and bared her fangs. She'd known some of those kids from the moment they were born. Now, she was nothing more than a 'human whore'. A crazy lady children dared by their friends to throw rocks at.

It was then Jennifer knew she had to leave.

Jennifer slipped into her home she was no longer welcome in an hour after sunrise, hidden under a rain coat stolen from Mrs. Vicker's line and shielded by the thick cover of clouds and rain pounding the landscape. Slipped into the house when her mother would be passed out and curled up to the only lover she'd known since Jennifer's father died - a bottle of whiskey.

Quickly and quietly, she ransacked her own home; her father's old backpack which she stuffed with a few clothes, dry or canned goods from the pantry, the diamond necklace her mother gave Jennifer on her twelfth birthday.

Trudging through the rain, Jennifer pushed Darren Anderson's motorcycle to the edge of town, the tank filled gas from siphoned from his Dad's truck. He'd left two years earlier for college and had never been back.

Jennifer slung her leg over the seat. She took one final look at the town, her town. The place where she was born. The place she knew like the back of her hand and how, when the sun went down, they'd titter and gossip about the Jones girl who went into the city and got infected, just like her Daddy, then stole away with their possessions like a thief in the day before disappearing.

She pointed the handlebars towards the city and gunned the engine. She had to find Katherine. If the humans created the virus, maybe they created a cure. An infinitesimally small amount of hope but it was all Jennifer had. She felt the tears well in her eyes. Maybe she could find a cure but she knew she'd never be able to go home again. Could never go home because she'd always be..